The Single Moms Club — Take This Job and Love It!

You know, being a single mom was not something I signed up for at all. But I realized in the filming of Tyler Perry’s The Single Moms Club that being a single mom is not something to be ashamed of, nor is it a scarlet letter to be worn as if you couldn’t hack it as a wife or significant other.

While filming my life went from wife and mother to single mom and now ex-wife. It had to be divine order that I would work with someone I admired so much, Nia Long, and she was a single mother too and had been for a while. She became my sounding board, my advice giver and my rock during our time filming. One of the main reasons I was staying in my marriage longer than I should have is because I’ve read so many articles making it seem that being a single mother — especially a single, Black mother — is nothing more than perpetuation of a stereotype or the proof of some statistics of some dude in an office telling his version of today’s single mothers through his scientific findings and relaying it to the masses.

Let me tell you something: I was married and I loved being married. I just didn’t like the marriage. I chose to walk away after trying my best to not be a statistic, or as they like to call us “baby mommas.” I am no one’s “baby momma,” I am a mother to a beautiful son, and I just so happen to now be single. In this day and age with marriage not being the “stylish” thing to do and so many single successful women of all races who choose not to drink the juice being passed around these days that makes a good woman decide it’s cool to be someone’s “side chick” or “jump-off,” many more women are choosing to be single mothers. The single mother is no longer the chick you see sitting outside the projects while her six kids run around. Yes, we still have single mommas in the hood holding it down, but you also have single mothers taking their kids to school or football practice in the Benz they paid for and tucking their kids into bed at night in the house in her name.